Iris Chang charges in her book that the Japanese soldiers in Nanking
murdered Chinese in barbaric and gruesome ways.
Japanese historians say that
such charges stem from wartime hostile propaganda, possibly easily
believed by the Chinese public even if such scenes were never
actually witnessed, because they were precisely the ways in which
Chinese often killed each other throughout their history, including
this period. Many Chinese had suffered such fates at the hands
of fellow Chinese, and the average man or woman knew next-to -nothing
about Japanese culture. Such people make easy prey to Chinese
propaganda.
Historian Nakamura Akira cites the "60 major methods of execution"
of the Chinese Communist Party,
implemented against opponents, as a modern example of the historic
tradition of brutal violence.
Nakamura says the list includes killing opponents by 1) frying them alive,
2) driving nails into their bodies, 3) cut off ears and gouge
out the eyes, 4) skinning the faces alive, 5)cut the bodies open
while alive and pull out the internal organs, 6) pierce a rope
through the nose and pull the victims around, and the list goes
on.
Of these, methods 3), 4),5),6) were actually implemented against
Japanese civilians and soldiers in Chinan in May of 1928 and in
Tongzhou in July of 1937.
Japanese execute people too, but the kind of methods as described
above, which echo the many gruesome descriptions in Iris Chang's
book, are alien to Japanese culture and imagination historically.
Source: Nakamura Akira, Dai Toa Sensou heno Michi , (Tokyo: Tendensha, 1990), p.456d